


Fear and Loathing in Kastrup

by SectoBoss



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Coffee, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 02:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4122441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crew tries coffee for the first time – a lot of coffee. It goes about as well as you’d expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear and Loathing in Kastrup

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt at a crew-on-caffeine fic, based off of a doodle-or-die Haiz did. I tried to do it in the style of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (hence the title), but that seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit.

They were somewhere around Kastrup, on the edge of the city, when the caffeine began to take hold.

“You drank _how much?_ ” Mikkel asked, looking in disbelief at the jug he had brewed the coffee in. The two-litre container was quite empty.

“Oh, a cup or two,” Emil said nonchalantly. “This stuff’s really good! Passed it round to Tuuri and Reynir, too,” he added, motioning towards the driver’s cabin of the tank. From within, the sounds of gradually accelerating conversation could be heard.

“Sigrun had a lot of it too. Not sure about Lalli, thought. To be honest I don’t think he really liked it.”

At the mention of her name, Sigrun swivelled in her chair and grinned at Mikkel, showing far too many teeth to put him at ease. Her eyes seemed to be moving of their own accord. Strange and terrible things looked like they were happening behind them.

“Tuuri!” Mikkel called through to the cabin. “As your doctor, I advise you to drive at top speed back to the camp. It’ll be a miracle if we can get back there before you all turn into a pack of wild animals.”

 

* * *

 

Good caffeine sneaks up on you. The first ten minutes is all waiting, but over the course of the next few minutes you can slowly start to feel it working on you. Eventually you can barely remember a time when things weren’t like this, and it’s at this point that the Fear can get its claws into you – that terrible notion that maybe the world has _always_ been like this, but you have only just noticed.

Or at least, that’s what Emil was desperately wondering as the tank skidded and swerved through the broken streets of Kastrup.

There is no way to describe the terror he felt as he looked around him. He had never been so aware in his entire life. Nothing happened in the tank that he didn’t know about. The world around him was suddenly displayed in ultra-fine resolution and time felt strangely meaningless. He felt that he could see down to the microscopic level, able to pick out the individual threads on the worn mattress he was sat on. Eternity briefly cartwheeled before his eyes and he tried very hard not to look at it.

He refused to look up. He had made that mistake a few minutes ago. On the bunk above him, Lalli was hunkering under the sheets and Emil had been treated to the horrific, caffeine-induced sight of his friend somehow entangled _within and between_ the sheets in some impossible higher-dimensional mathematical abstraction.

To his right Mikkel was looking around at the other five in despair and muttering something along the lines of: “…shouldn’t be possible, never seen such an adverse reaction to stimulants before…” but Emil ignored him. He was uncomfortably aware that Mikkel was made up of billions of individual cells and the notion disturbed him somehow. Instead he looked the other way, over towards the door to the driver’s cabin. As his eyes flicked unblinkingly past her he did his best to un-notice Sigrun sat in the corner, sharpening her wicked-looking combat knife and smiling happily to herself. Her eyes were managing to look in three different directions at once and the expression in them could snap a person’s mind, caffeine or none.

 _Remain calm_ , he thought to himself desperately. _Ignore this strange and terrible drug._

 

* * *

 

 _“Why aren’t we moving??”_ Sigrun roared, bursting into the cabin as the tank unexpectedly slewed to a halt. Inside, she found Tuuri and Reynir still chattering way to each other, speaking far too fast for her to work out what they were saying. Tuuri had gotten so carried away she’d forgotten to keep driving. _“We can’t stop here!”_ she yelled. _“This is troll country!”_

She slammed her hand on the dashboard but neither Tuuri nor Reynir seemed to notice her. Their lips were just blurs behind the clear plastic of their haz-masks. Sigrun swore. Was there no communication in this tank anymore? Had her crew somehow degenerated to the level of _dumb beasts_?

She looked through the tank windows and swore again. They weren’t alone out here.

Sat on top of a ruined car next to the tank was a pair of tiny trolls, both barely the size of a human head. One dark brown and the other light grey, they looked back at her in surprise. One opened its mouth, revealing a row of needle-sharp teeth, and started screaming out every vowel in the world.

Sigrun felt the need to respond. She wound down the window and started yelling back, madly, incoherently, deep in the grip of some bad craziness and waving her razor-sharp knife around above her head.

_“Hey! Wimps! You want some? Got plenty! Come on then, you slimes! I’ll cut you both! I’m serious godsdamn it! Murder! Death! Kill! Knife! You rat bastards! Right in the eyeballs! Argh!”  
_

“Blep,” chirruped the second troll. It hopped backwards, slipped, and fell off the roof of the car with a wet thump. The first troll ramped its screaming up a notch, adding accents and umlauts and bars to the torrent pouring from its mouth. A muffled “blep” came from under the car, barely audible over the other troll’s screeching.

Sigrun’s words descended into raw noise and for a moment her shouts and the troll’s briefly harmonised. Then a pair of strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her back into the tank. She tumbled backwards and not a moment too soon – a third troll sprang up into view just as she cleared the window frame. It had been creeping up on her from around the tank, and nearly took her head off with its disjointed mandibles as it lunged forwards on its accordion-like spine. It overbalanced and smacked into the door with a snarl, denting but not breaking the metal.

 _“You degenerate pig!”_ Sigrun bellowed at it as Mikkel wound up the window. It was him who’d pulled her back in the nick of time. His expression was one of a man desperately hoping he’ll wake up from a nightmare soon. On the other side of the glass the troll seemed to consider another strike but saw the look in Sigrun’s eyes and perhaps thought better of it. It accordioned away over the ruined car and into a crumbling building like a living spring, pausing to absentmindedly swat at the screaming troll as it did so.

 _“Spooked!”_ Sigrun grinned wildly as the troll retreated. _“Did you see that? It was spooked! Like a lamb in a slaughterhouse! Gods damn, it’s serious now! We’re at war here!”_ She brandished her knife at it some more.

Mikkel kept his eyes firmly on Sigrun as he reached behind him and patted Tuuri insistently on the shoulder. “Tuuri? Tuuri! You need to get us out of here.” There was no response. Against his better judgement, he quickly looked around at her and his heart sank at what he saw. The caffeine had clearly shifted gears on her: Tuuri was deep in the throes of a crash, staring hollow-eyed out over the ruined city.

“You drive,” she said very quietly. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

 

* * *

 

_To: Oresund Base, Danish High Command, Anyone Who Will Listen_

_Telegram from Mikkel Madsen  
_

_Have suffered serious setback STOP Crew incapacitated STOP Ingestion of severe amounts of caffeine producing unprecedented effects STOP Scout Hotakainen and myself only ones unaffected and communication between us impossible STOP Send help immediately highest priority STOP Dear God they just won’t STOP  
_

_Madsen_


End file.
